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KS3 Assessment- plan for next year

It's that time of year where the edutwitter argument of whether you should do work in the Summer holidays or not arrives. Personally, if you are doing the display/planning because you want to, then go for it. I actually find it makes me feel more prepared and less stressed overall in September, and a resource or something that there is never time to prepare when teaching is made and helps throughout the year.

Since becoming Head of Department this year, I knew we needed to look at our assessment for Years 7, 8 and 9. There was not a particularly robust way we were assessing our students, or one that followed some kind of consistency between assessments, year groups and teachers.
We have seen the benefits of knowledge recall tests with our KS4/5 students, and wanted to roll this out to KS3. Also, based on discussions on Twitter, much talk is about how we engage students with the work of historians. Therefore, each assessment has a quote from a historian to consider their interpretation of the events. I also wanted to include a primary source, and to have one other written question that would change format between assessments (the interpretation and source analysis are the same question for every assessment). Yes, the 4th question uses the wording of our AQA GCSE questions, but we are not overtly pressing this point. In any case, they are often just the usual kind of questions you would ask.
(This could be more eloquently worded, but Summer holiday brain and all that!)

We will use them for this year and reflect on their effectiveness as we teach them.

Hope these are of use!

Link to copies: KS3 assessment pdf 
                            KS3 assessment PowerPoint
There is a pdf and PowerPoint version- hopefully won't mess with the format!




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